


Creepypasta for Two

by matcha_condoms



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: AU - Government cover-ups in Pale City, Cryptid Six, Cryptid Vlogger!Mono, F/M, I have fully divorced fron canon and won custody of the kids, Mono is a little celebrity and a good boyfriend, Secret dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29941170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matcha_condoms/pseuds/matcha_condoms
Summary: Only two beings elude being caught on film:1.	The deadly Maw that prowls the woods of Pale City, and2.	Celebrity paranormal vlogger Mono’s new girlfriend.(Except, no one has to know they’re one and the same)
Relationships: Mono/Six (Little Nightmares)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 82





	Creepypasta for Two

**Author's Note:**

> yeeeeeeeeehaw we're out the rodeo and just in the wild west of canon denial now!

“So, I hear your fanbase is calling her The Lady?” The interviewer slides in, shoving the lollipop-shaped novelty mic in Mono’s face. His smile is a friendly elbow in his ribs, and Mono sighs, face heating.

Mono runs a clammy hand through his hair, wishing he had his old paper bag mask, like when he first started his channel years ago. His channel icon is still his famous first mask.

“I’m really happy that the viewers been so kind to us,” Mono begins, “y’know, it means a lot—”

“C’mon man, you’re making her the next top cryptid of Pale City!”

“Oh, _geeeeeze_ ,” Mono sighs, grinning, “she spooks as easily. I don’t think I could ever get her on camera with me.”

“The Tall Man, Cryptid Hunter Extraordinaire, unable to get someone on tape?”

“It’ll be the Maw before her, I swear,” Mono says, twiddling his fingers, “but the way she makes me happy is no creepypasta. She’s really dating me, and _that’s_ unbelievable to me.”

“Eugh! They call me the Lollipop Boy, but that just gave me toothache! There you have it, folks – it’s just going to be eeeevery supernatural being in Pale City uploaded on the Signal Tower, @PCSignalTower on twitter, Instagram…just not the Lady.”

***

The first question people ask; the first question on his FAQ on his channel, is _Why the hell are you still in Pale City?_

The answer? Because _they_ are.

 _They_ is every non-human resident, staying behind after the Pale City Incident of 96’. _They_ refer to _once_ -human, to the creepy-crawly, to the rumoured, rare, and **_dangerous_**.

When the dust settled and the Geiger counters slowed their beeping. When the mass vaccinations and the coverup stories rolled out. Among the rotting protest signs and broken promises was Pale City, split in half where the factories once were – and there was Mono.

“The second most frequent question is “ _Is this all real?”,_ which,” Mono huffs, stepping over a tree root, “my answer always is, _come here and find out,_ ”

He pauses where the sunlight is brightest in the dark, rotting allies, trying to catch a good shot for his “Day in the Week of: A Ghost City Resident” video.

“I buy my groceries from an old lady who grows vegetables—” deep creaking is heard offscreen, “—in the underground weed operation her dead son started --”

Mono pauses, letting sweet old Mrs Zhao grin and wave on screen with her one hand.

“—and you think I’m lying about radiation mutated humans, and the cannibal in the woods?” Mono asks finally, levelling a deadpan face to his audience.

“They’re real. The incident was real. My vaccination scar, my sixth sense…it’s all real.”

Mono pans his camera across the wilting landscape of Pale City, once named for how bright it was that it was a white patch from the sky. The sun still rises, and Mono’s still home. No matter how many trips he has to make out the city for toilet paper. Pale City will always be home.

Now, he had to go dig up a chicken, and convince it to spit out an egg. Green eggs and ham - another specialty of Pale City, post-96.

***

“It gets lonely,” Mono admits, around the 2:33 minute timestamp of his “Collecting All Glitched Remains” video.

The camera is aimed away from his face, recording the endless halls of the hospital. The silence sometimes made him regret cremating the demented Doctor alive. That was years ago, and still one of his most popular uploads.

He never meant for this to be his only connection to the world – screens and static. It was a cry for help at first, a prayer that one day he could fall through a screen and open a door to a better life.

Then he realised it didn’t have to a way out. It could be a way _in_ , for everyone to return to Pale City in a way. To bring life back.

“There she is, where I saw her last,” Mono says, opening the door to an empty room. Tallies on the wall mark desperation that survived the first impact. The gaping hole on the floor, with the piles of bent, warped metal spoon was an effigy.

Hanging in the air, still catching the form of her forlorn shoulders, were organic ash and static caught in the still air. It buzzes, and it turns to look at Mono with formless eyes.

His last act of humanity for them – a hug. It disrupts their signal, and she dissipates.

“I thought about leaving her,” Mono says, after a stretched moment of silence he doesn’t bother to edit out, “I really did,”

There’s a crackle as he picks his camera up again, and walks out the room.

“…because it gets lonely. It really does.” Mono repeats.

***

Much like every other tragedy on the Internet, it becomes a meme. A screencap of his world-weary face is overlaid with “SOMEONE END MY MONO-TONY” and “BOTTOM TEXT”. He even makes a video reacting to his favourite memes, most poking fun at the woes of being single.

It reminded him of the way the older boys at school could always bully a laugh out of him if they tried hard enough. Somehow, Mono manages to laugh the pain away.

He grows up on screen, surrounded by no one and millions of eyes all at once. He goes “thrifting’ in the dump when he hits his growth spurt. He has a lonesome Halloween dressed as a cryptid from another place. Mono becomes “Thin Man”. His channel hits its first million subscribers.

Then one bright day, a six-second video titled “I have a confession…” is uploaded.

“I have a girlfriend.” Mono says, smiling on screen, “That’s all.”

***

The internet is set ablaze, and Mono couldn’t care less, looking cool and reclined, chest deep in a swamp.

Something is breathing heavily offscreen. Mono tilts his phone and shows the world his newest find – a 3-meter man with a shotgun, and a gunnysack over his head.

The Cyclops.

Mono had thought he was a surviving hunter at first, even uploading a new video called “Meeting my new neighbour!”, where he walked up to the old shack in the forest with a housewarming gift. A quick peek in the kitchen? Rotting Meat on a plate.

He posts a poll on twitter. 97% of respondents voted “go in and explore”.

A human- taxidermy dinner scene, a dusty corpse in the attic, and a chase through _multiple_ bear traps later? Here he was, swamp-stained socks and all.

On camera, the Cyclops stalks off, his towering form silent in the tall grass. Mono can still hear whizzing bullets singing in his ears. He rolls in the swamp and trails the hunter. One day he’ll regret being this young and stupid, but then again – being cautious didn’t put non-irradiated food on the table.

Mono slips out the water and into the grass. The Cyclops was a hell of a shot, cracking his camera lens from a yawning distance away just by the red of his recording light. He’d have to be careful if he wanted this unmasking footage to ever get uploaded.

His phone is hot in his palm, and guilt at exploiting the local mutations is burning in Mono. He makes a quick break from the grass to the ancient wood of the old mill. Lumbering footsteps chase fiercely after him, nearly masking the tell-tale creak that would be his signal. Mono kicks an old engine, and runs in the open just as his spring-loaded hook descends, and quickly yanks up.

A ripping clears through the night, and Mono sees a flash of wrinkled skin. One eye – a cornea that then split open into a mouth. Mono keeps his shaking fingers still for the footage.

Then a yellow shape swoops from the trees, and footage be damned. Mono bolts from the scene.

***

“Thanks for all your messages, but I’m safe in the bunker! Just sorry I couldn’t get a shot of the Maw for you guys.” Mono tweets. An accompanying picture of his legs up on a ratty ottoman is posted. In the replies, his Viewers zoom in on the glimpse of slender fingers laced in Mono’s left hand.

_\- Forget the Maw! Proof of the Lady being real!!!_

_\- Thin Man can survive cannibal cryptids and spend the night with his girl and I can’t even get a text back :/_

_\- Reveal video!!!!_

_\- Pog_

Mono scrolls through them, smiling. He explains the ones his Lady doesn’t understand, and smiles as she smiles, content.

***

Thin Man’s upload history sails choppy seas.

> _“School’s out…for good”_ (33:49) – A distraught Mono leads viewers where the old schoolteacher once reigned. All that remains is her spine, all forty-five meters of it, stretched from the dorms to the labs. Viewers spot a scrap of yellow fabric that Mono misses in one blurry frame.
> 
> _“GRWM | Girlfriend picks what I wear for the week”_ (18:25) – A bright and cheery Mono models different outfits. He’s grown out of his old bashfulness, winking when the soft voice offscreen pokes him to pose. The comments all say they’re adorable together.
> 
> “ _Locking down Pale City: Maw on the prowl”_ (40:45) – A rare, classic documentary format from the Thin Man. Vegetation broken near the forest edge, broken camera equipment that didn’t belong to Mono. He finds bloodied shards of lenses near ravaged hiking gear. The Signal Tower of Pale City unofficially declares a lockdown, for the Viewers’ safety.
> 
> _“Goodbye for now, Mrs Zhao”_ (16:00) – Mono and his Lady help Mrs. Zhao move, and the touching montage is filled with sequences of her cooing over how cute they are together. After they send her off at Pale City gates, a conversation ensues between the couple. Mono smiles when his Lady says she’ll keep the small garden alive. The corn at least, so they have popcorn for movie nights.

There is a space of a week and two days. The last and latest video is a livestream.

***

Most personal tweets get confined to his ThinMan twitter account. A line is crossed one weekday night, when social media shatters with a single image.

The headquarters of the Signal Tower; Mono’s iconic office wall – once papered and thumbtacked with red thread, now spattered with black. The wood wall behind has deep scratches, and embedded in the carnage are shreds of yellow cloth.

“It took her.” Is the caption.

***

The livestream begins with no announcement. The screen is black and bioluminescent green, shaking with the heavy steps Mono takes through the wild woods. A flash of white darts through the dark vines and the chat scrolls with panicked cries for Mono to turn and _run_.

Then they hear a gunshot, and realize he’s not there for the Signal Tower tonight. He’s there as Thin Man. Mono. Alone in the city that’s lonely again.

Breaking news livestreams concurrently, with footage of rescue rangers loading up into emergency helicopters. Tonight, there’s no gopro rigged to capture his reactions, like Mono is behind the paper bag again, masked from the world.

All the Viewers get tonight is spinning, whirling blurs, and the burning anger behind each missed, deafening shot.

Mono stops when his last shot ricochets against what is unmistakeably rock and not flesh. He slams his boot down, and the world watches his shaky hands reload his shotgun. He drops a shell, fumbles to pick it up.

In what is the most iconic footage, spliced and repeated for years to come – his Viewers hear Mono sniffle, cloth rustling, before a box is produced on-screen.

“I was going to propose,” he whispers. Broken.

Then like daybreak at midnight, light falls through the trees. The camera pans up urgently to see the tops of great trees falling apart, and then a figure in yellow, standing against the moon. Mono gives chase immediately, and a haunting laughter that sounds like song fills the breathless recording.

Running. Running. Running. Then Pale City in her glory, from the highest vantage point – Mono falls.

The camera and the Viewers alike shudder for tense seconds, where nothing is on screen but the vertical rock of the cliff. Some swear they hear the clattering of the falling shotgun when they amplify the audio. Then, turning, Pale City comes to view. Like a scene out a script, something’s caught Mono.

Then he looks up, and finds that it’s some _one_. A hooded being in yellow, with long claws, all visage hidden but a splitting grin. It lifts Mono near, and then lets him fall. He screams and footage cuts to black.

***

Emergency rescue doesn’t bother landing. The scarce concrete facts keep the legend burning all the brighter. All they have are scenes of bloodshed, the torn metal of a shotgun, and like a hazard tape, warning people away – ribbons of yellow fabric.

Thin Man doesn’t die with Mono. There are endless Viewers that become Thin Mans, and many Thin Mans that become Mono. That is to say, a Missing Person’s case, and a piece of Pale City’s Mystery.

Some still brave the streets of Pale City, claiming they’ve seen Mono as a glitching phantom, or hearing laughter in the woods. Forums speculate that the Maw is growing, its two gleaming eyes hungry on their night-vision cameras. The online poets murmur that Mono is lonely no longer, with his legend bringing Pale City bright-eyed visitors, just like he would have wanted.

And Mono? Mono spends his days with his strange Lady, swinging their shining rings as they walk through their city. Brave laughter comes from the distance, a group of intrepid videographers, no doubt, lured by Mono’s fable.

He kisses his Lady, and smiles as he leaves her to transform and feed. There’s harvesting to be done at the greenhouse, and he’s on popcorn duty tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cringe but I'm free.


End file.
